Those who complain that popular television is the sworn enemy of religion, morality and common decency may not be watching the right programs, said British-born theologian Sheila Briggs in a stimulating focus session that left many of the heads in her audience swimming. Briggs explained that the Christ story in mutated form is viewed by millions weekly in series like Xena, the Warrior Princess and Babylon V. These shows and others explicitly teach popular Christologies not by retelling the gospel, she said, but by inserting basic messages of community, salvation and forgiveness into plots and characters. Indeed, said Briggs, science fiction-fantasy is proving a valuable vehicle for recasting the Christ message into forms that are intelligible to a post-modern audience.

Briggs, who teaches at the University of Southern California, moved into her Xena and Babylon segment only after a lengthy but lucid discussion about the impossibility of fully understanding the Jesus of history and the early Christian communities. The original events have been layered over and altered by so many cultural assumptions over the centuries (including the dominance of patriarchy, the exaltation of celibacy, the fear of sex, and the celebration of blind obedience) that the original Jesus can scarcely be retrieved, she said. Not to worry, explained Briggs, because as the old cultural assumptions die ("and they have been dying now for 200 years"), new cultural understandings which recognize the fundamental unity of mind and body and the equality of the sexes are becoming dominant. Hence, Jesus as the Christ is in a sense reincarnated in ways which are accessible to the masses. All of which does not mean we must put away our Bibles and Bible commentaries. "Do not ignore the first century," said Briggs, "but do not privilege it either."